Hiking Mount Kenya. Part 1

Hello everyone! This post is written by my husband Raad where he will tell you the first part of Mount Kenya Hike experience.

By the time he decided to climb Mt. Kenya I had already left Kenya for good. Of course we had a great interest in doing this hike together and a bit earlier but by that time I was already pregnant and we decided not to take additional risks.So, enjoy!

Mt. Kenya National Park is located about 175km North-East of Nairobi. It is the second high mountain ( Batian peak (5,199 metres or 17,057 ft) after Mt. Kilimanjaro (5,895 metres or 19,341 ft) in Africa.

UNESCO inscribed Mount Kenya as a World Heritage Site. Its described as one of the most impressive landscapes in Eastern Africa with its rugged glacier-clad summits, Afro-alpine moorlands and diverse forests that illustrate outstanding ecological processes.

You can't live in Kenya for a year without climbing Mount Kenya, can you?

After going through many websites and asking many friends and colleagues, I managed to find a decent guide to climb Mount Kenya.

The guy's name is Chris, a young and professional Mount Kenya hiking guide. To cut a long story short, Chris explained that this is a 4 days, 3 nights hike taking a route called the Solomon route. Its considered to be the most scenic of them.

The team was composed of Chris (the guide), two porters and a cook plus two tourists :)

So the first day, early in the morning, we met in down town Nairobi at the Mtatu stop to meet with Chris. We took a (VIP) Mtatu to Nanyuki. From there, Chris organized a 4x4 car to take us to the gate of the Mount Kenya National Park.

On our way to the park main entrance our car overheated and the driver went to get some water to the main gate that was about 3 km. We had to wait for about an hour.

Near the main park entrance

You would be surprised when you see how much weight could these guys carry on there backs and hike Mount Kenya like they're going down a slope!

Mt. Kenya view at distance

The hike was nice and easy. We experienced some light rain but nothing of real concern. We tried to debrief some hikers that were on their way down from the top! We realized that some hikers merely took a one day trip to the first camp and back to Nanyuki! (And then they tell their friends that they conquered mount Kenya!).

We arrived to camp Moses at around 17.00 hrs. It was already starting to get chilly and windy up there. After talking to some hikers who came from the top, about 30-40% of hikers don't make it to the top of Mount Kenya. I can't hide that I was starting to get concerned at that point. Especially after some horrific stories of hikers starting to get seriously sick after reaching altitudes higher than 4000m above sea-level!